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My siblings and I didn’t have any first cousins. We reveled in the benefits of being the only grandchildren on both sides of the family, and we didn’t even know what we were missing. I didn’t realized the power of cousin friendships until our own children started having children. Then, I watched something amazing.

At first, since they lived far apart, I worked hard to facilitate the friendships. We hosted a cousins camp every year with the whole gaggle of them camping out at our place. But we haven’t pulled that off the last two summers, and now the girl cousins bypass me and simply video chat one another. Their friendships are some combination of best friends and sisters, without the drama of BFF’s or the rivalries of sisterhood.

If we go visit in Omaha, we must kiss the littlest sisters quickly before their cousin, Macy, arrives from across town. Once she comes in the door, we no longer exist. Our job is done. Evidently.

The boy cousins are equally bonded. But, you know, they show it in boy ways. Evidently they are building a kingdom of some kind in cyberspace through an app on their phones. And their fathers are playing, too.

The most interesting dynamic, though, is the way the girl cousins look up to the boy cousins. Nine-year-old Jake has star quality in the eyes of the little girls. And he works it.

Jake

 

This bond is hard to explain. It is a connectedness that goes back generations and reaches forward generations. And when it is also founded on a mutual faith in God, it is a beautiful and powerful thing. I sometimes wonder what these cousins could do if they joined forces in adulthood.

This bond is also ageless.

About once a week, two of my father’s girl cousins arrive at his front door with lunch.  The ladies join my parents in their little apartment, and the four of them spend the afternoon visiting and catching up on news. My eighty-eight-year-old dad may not be as energetic as Jake, and my mom and the cousins may not dance around him the way Macy, Nola, and Violet tend to do, but the love is exactly the same.

It is ageless.

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Sometimes I think we overlook these family relationships. We pull out a couple of scriptures and then imagine God wants us to ignore blood ties in favor of spiritual ties in the church. But we forget that He established the family as the very first institution on earth. And He chose two sets of brothers as His first disciples. Maybe it isn’t that our kingdom relationships are supposed to supersede our family relationships. Maybe our kingdom friendships are supposed to embrace our family members until all our relationships actually become one.

Now, wouldn’t that be lovely?